Vasquez is already hunched over the keyboard as if preparing to dive into the screen. ‘Depends on a lot of things,’ he says. ‘Which web browser he uses. What his privacy settings are like. If he uses a password manager. If he sends normal text messages or uses an encrypted messaging app.’

‘He was a math professor. Cryptography was his hobby.’ As I say this, I realise we only have Luxford’s word for it. No evidence at the house.

‘Then it could take forever. That’s not hyperbole. I could use all the world’s computers until the heat death of the universe and not get through.’ Vasquez gestures around the room. ‘I’m sure half these computers are filled with unspeakable videos. But if the suspect used the right kind of encryption, there’s no way I’ll ever prove it.’

‘Just get us what you can,’ Thistle says.

Her phone rings. She moves away to answer it.

A flash of paranoia. The voice on the phone could be another cop, saying, We found Kenneth Biggs. He was in Timothy Blake’s freezer.

Or it could be nothing.

Vasquez is still tapping away.

‘You gonna work this personally?’ I ask.

‘For a while. If it looks like it will actually take until the end of the universe, I’ll farm it out to an intern.’

‘Got it.’

Vasquez glances up. ‘It’ll take even longer with you looking over my shoulder.’

‘Okay, okay.’ I back off.

Thistle ends the call and comes over.

‘Blake,’ she says. ‘We have a problem. A second guy has gone missing.’

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 9

I have four legs at dawn, two legs at noon, three legs at night. What am I?

Thistle is driving as fast as she can get away with, no siren. It’s hard for me to read the file with the car bouncing around. But she wants to get to where we’re going—she hasn’t told me where that is—before the leads dry up.

So do I. A second victim turns this whole thing upside down.

‘Daniel Ruthven,’ I say, reading the missing persons report aloud; Thistle didn’t have time to look at it before we jumped in the car. ‘Thirty-one years of age. Unmarried. Last seen two days ago. He’s a low-level construction worker, currently building a fast-food place in Hendrix.’

‘How long has he been doing that for?’

‘Doesn’t say how long he’s been building the fast-food place. But he’s been with the company six years.’

It’s strange, reading to Thistle while she drives. Feels like the kind of thing a husband would do for his wife. The thought would leave me melancholy if she weren’t driving so terrifyingly fast.

‘There’s a picture, right?’ she says. ‘Does he look like the last victim?’